Why 100% Automation Is the Wrong Target ft. Luisa Barile, Group CEO, ManyPets

0:00 we're almost victim of our own success because we have been growing so well in the UK and then we launched in other countries and then you start to have >> Luisa, welcome back to Ensurance Insights. How have you found it today so far? How was your keynote? >> Yeah, thank you for having me. It's it's always good to be to be back and so I think the keynote was was very interesting and it's a opportunity for me to speak about the industry this time I took a more of an industry angle as opposed to just talking about ManyPets. They really love you know being back and it's an opportunity to connect with a lot of different people all in one place are very efficient and I think you know this year in particular because of you know so much is changing you know every every week every month it's been really interesting to go and see some of the talks and you know see what people are actually you know doing.

0:58 >> You covered a lot of a lot of key trends in your keynote this morning. So we'll dive into a few of those in in a bit more detail. >> Yeah. >> but first of all give us the the bottom line up front. It was a very good year for ManyPets. You've done lots of exciting things and and the results are there to show for that. in a in a few in a few words what has impacted those results the most? What has impacted operations and delivery the most?

1:25 >> Yeah. So it has been a really good year this year I think we have really built on the on the changes and the work that we've done in the previous year with very strong foundations of underwriting and and operations and now we're really you know we've really invested more into growth and the proposition and how do we bring all of that to to our customers and we've actually seen that you know happening in a you know in in a very positive way.

1:58 One of the things I talked about in the in my keynote and I know it's the the only point where I actually had a many pet example is seeing the cost of our cost per claim going down while our Trustpilot score has been going up. To me that's really the the outcome of the investment that we have made in the in the technology. So we're you know, not just making investment or really seeing the impact on faster claims and you know, better outcome for customers and at the same time a reduced cost of claims for us. So that's really that you know, win-win position which is which is exciting and has has been the fuel of growth.

2:41 >> Sounds like a customer at a ManyPets Utopia that both of those numbers are moving in the right direction at at the same time. Currently I think more than half of claims are no human touch. What is the road map to get to 100 or is the likelihood we can get to 100 and why has customer experience or trust increased so so dramatically? >> Yeah, so talking about your first question first, you know, we have at the moment we're doing a little bit more than half of the claims completely automated. We'll probably never want to get to 100% partly because you always want to have a control group to make sure that you know, your check like you're paying the right claims, you're checking against you know, a human experience. But also we're very cautious about which type of claims do we automate and there are certain claims that are more complex and also more emotional. For example, when a pet dies where people particularly want to talk to a human as opposed to just get everything automated. so we are, you know, we're thoughtful about where do we apply that automation to get the best experience for the customers, but also the right outcome for us. If we get it wrong on a small claim, it's not a big cost. If we get it wrong on a big claim, there's clearly more of a you know, of an issue because you're overpaying.

4:14 >> I suppose that leads nicely into into the point you made earlier on retention. So claims is one big component in customer loyalty and and retention. What is the other? and and what else can you foresee being a big driver in the next few years? >> Yeah, and so we talked about claims in particular and you know, claims I think it is really at the heart of pet insurance operations because pet is a high claims frequency category. So you know, you do have that interaction with the customer at the point of claim.

4:46 but we apply it to in general to the customer experience. You know, people may want to call us because they're are changing their address or because they they're not sure they have the right level of cover and they want to consider other options. So for us it's really being there for customers and you know, providing the best support. clearly we're more of a digital player, so we try to support customers to do that in a digital way.

5:08 But having the right, you know, human support around it if it's needed. So I think that I would cluster all of that in the camp of, you know, a great service, you know, to the to the customers which you know, is a big part of the choice of renewing. The other half of it is pricing. so you know, we we are spending quite a lot of attention making sure that we have the right pricing at the renewals. clearly trying to understand, you know, what's the risk of that pet and you know, the information that we know about, you know, about the pet per se, but also thinking about the lifetime of the pet. so we're not you know, we've never really looked at, you know, buying customers cheap and then increasing prices over time.

5:56 Now, prices do increase over time because the pet becomes older, because, you know, vet inflation is increasing, etc. but we're really trying to price over that, you know, relationship, longer relationship, so that people don't have a shock of having dramatically different prices at the point of renewal. And that's a an important component of of that retention. >> Is there also an element of of prevention and and pet wellness? how is the the broader non-insurance product set evolving? and and what else can we do on prevention and and and whole of whole of life's health?

6:36 >> Yeah, so I think there is a really important element of prevention and as the cost of the kind of vet treatment if you want is becoming more and more expensive, I think there is a more important role that prevention can play to bring the overall cost of providing a health service to the pets more affordable for people. and again, that that's an area where the use of technology can really help because, you know, we do have a lot of data and it is possible to use that data to provide the right information to customers so that they can better navigate their choices, they can better understand you know, why certain things are happening and and then decide whether they know whether they need to go out to see a vet or actually that's you know, no need, you can just take, you know, some certain small steps and, you know, things will be fine. So, really it's a question of helping people understand their choices, you know, understand like what what is happening through the use of like by surfacing, if you want, our data.

7:39 but also then helping them to, kind of use the technology, to to have access to the right, advice at the right time. >> So, this this is where having a a strong partnership network, helps. Being able to not just to understand the what what's happening to the pets or the or the customer, but being able to suggest and enable a a next step.

8:10 so is there is there kind of a, a scale a network scale effect? and is is this why you also mentioned, that the market is is consolidating a bit and that we might end up with with fewer, more more important players? >> Yeah, I don't think the market is yet consolidating. That's one of my prediction, for the future in terms of what we may see. I do have a strong view that scale is increasingly becoming more important, and it's actually quite difficult to compete in an environment, where like the bar is rising for everyone, which is a good thing. But like if you're a smaller player without data, without necessarily, significant budget on innovation, it's just harder to, to compete in this market. So, I think, you know, the the the scale is really an important factor to make sure that, you know, the right investments are deployed and therefore, you get a you know, better outcome.

9:15 >> Have there been any any scaling pains? or is has it been steady controlled growth? slowly but surely or maybe quickly and surely, enabled by by technology. What are some of the scaling challenges? >> Yeah, so we we have gone through scaling pains, absolutely. Probably less in the last couple of years. we had experienced those pains as we were growing in the past. and you know, main part of the pains is you know, we have we're almost victim of our own success because we've been going so well in the UK and then we launched in other countries and then you start to have like a very complex organization trying to do a lot of different things. so I think that was part of the challenge of you kind of building on the success but then at at some point, you know, you're adding complexity and then that complexity kind of slows down the success. so we had as an organization well now more than 2 years ago, we had made decision of exiting some of the international markets, focusing on the UK where we have a significant scale and significant business, turning the UK to profitability, continuing to invest and expand on the proposition in the UK.

10:37 And now we're in a point where, you know, we're profitable, we're generating cash, we're continuing to grow in a more controlled way with those kind of solid foundations in place. And we may get to a point where we're now, you know, may expand and do other things but from a position of a very solid core business in the UK as opposed to trying to like still work on too many things at once. >> It's good. Yes. Brings us nicely onto the onto the next thing I wanted to to ask you. AI very useful in making sense of complexity across business units, across workflows.

11:16 you mentioned earlier distribution. talk to we've spoken about pricing, we've spoken about claims. Talk to me about the the future of distribution, new channels, maybe chat GPT and called aggregation. How is it impacting pet and insurance now and how might it in the next few years? >> So I think in the moment people are increasingly using the LLM engines to do research. So we've definitely seen a still a relatively small portion, but it's growing exponentially even like over the past few months. At the moment it's mostly used for research. So people saying, well, you know, looking to is pet insurance worth it? Like should I even have it? And like what are the key features that are important to have? So really to build their own understanding and simplify that complexity.

12:08 I think at the moment, you know, what you can't do is getting a price. So comparing the quotes all in, you know, in one place in a very kind of simple way, you know, throughout the chat. Now clearly we have the chat GPT apps that are popping up. It's still a little bit of a clunky process because you need to call the apps, give access, and call the different apps. I'm pretty sure that over the next few months the process will become a lot smoother. And therefore people are going to start using it more. And then I also think that, you know, from the distribution side, the AI assistants, you know, are going to gradually expand into the life cycle of the policies. So you can easily see people using AI assistants say, well, I'm changing address, you know, change all my address on all my policies, right? So to kind of do the admin task of the moment people are still doing manually or sometimes are even forgetting to do.

13:06 Because they're not like they're changing their address and they forget to tell their insurance they've actually changed their address. Or like submit the claims. Right, now here's the invoice, you know, submit the claim for me. So I think there is going to be more and more of of the kind of the life cycle of the product that is going to be handled by AI and companies really should make the And they need to think about, you know, both the distribution, but also their operating model to ensure that the the right information can be served as, to the AI assistants in the right way. So, I talked about going from a API-first infrastructure to a MCP-first infrastructure, and that's the thing that we're working on right now.

13:57 >> So, you we've we've spoken lots about automating claims, AI in distribution, better pricing. One of the big themes here this year at at Insurtech Insights Europe is agentic. AI for agentic teams, agents working together, to automate not just one chunk of of the life cycle or or or or the workflow, but maybe the the entire customer and and all its interactions with with many pets. What is the likelihood that What is the road map there? What is the likelihood you might never have to to to have a human in the loop for for 50 50 to to to 90% of customers?

14:40 >> Yeah, I I think it's quite likely that things will dramatically change, in the future. We are getting ready for that across and all the different functions. we already have Like I think, you know, you mentioned that orchestration of, moving from a very narrow application to having the agents that actually talking to each other and addressing different things. we already have it in in the claims automation, for example, because you cannot get to that level of automation just by doing one thing. You know, we have a really our AI agent is a family of five different agents or like families of agents, if you want, each doing one thing but talking to each other.

15:26 So it may check you know if there is a duplicate claim claim going to the police administration system and check if you know the details are are matching and then connecting with each other and talking to each other. So I think that is the future of of of the automation which is why it's really important to have that overall infrastructure, right? Because you need to have access to the right tools. And the right data behind this. And I think you know there will be an evolution of the tools as well but at the moment every piece of technology will have an AI element, right? You know you're using your team and you know it has an AI element.

16:04 You're using like you know different different systems and each one has a has a little view and we really need to move from that like narrow view of one tool looking at AI in one way to a company-wide view where you're really orchestrating things and exposing information cross-function which is a a really interesting challenge. And then I think there is the element of the how do you then bring the organization along to that change because the roles were already changing quite a lot in terms of how the teams are structured, the roles that they perform in the team because that's you know the individual roles are blending a bit and I think the roles will become broader with a lot more flexibility in how people are interacting together.

16:56 >> I was going to ask you what are we going to do when the agents are running everything? And how can you give me one example of of an old shift change or the significant change in in the role of of the underwriting or or the the team for example. Have those been Have those been for the better? Are we focusing on more interesting work now? >> Yeah, so I am very positive about it. You know, the future you clearly read articles every day. They were all doomed. Like none of our jobs will exist in the future.

17:35 I don't think so. So we've seen it in a number of different transformations in the past and like revolutions in our like the internet came along and you know, everyone was like had had to figure out what to do. I think this is just the same transition on steroids in terms of the speed at which things are happening. So jobs will evolve. We'll all be doing different things. The way we interacting will change. I think from an organizational point of view and especially from you know, from my perspective as you know, CEO of an organization, it's really a question like how do you because of the speed at which the changes are happening, how do you move the organization fast enough to make sure that you know, you're you know, you you can keep up with the pace and not leaving people behind. But in the past I think those changes were happening in a more gradual way. So people had the time to adjust and evolve. Right now, the speed is you know, exciting from one side, but it's also a challenge to manage from a people management perspective.

18:42 >> I could talk to you as always for hours, Louisa, but we need to make way for for the next interview. So I'll I'll thank you there. best of luck for the rest of 2026. I I can't wait for the next one in 27 see how much the agents are doing and what the humans are doing now. but best of luck and thanks for for coming once again. >> Thank you very much for having me.